Oh, I agree, Sawfish -- and nice to see you again. I see them as a mostly sinister phenomenon.

Ian Fleming died in 1964. So, assuming his novels were not "works for hire", under most copyright schemes his work will enter public domain 70 years later, or 2033, which is not that far off at all.

More-recent adaptations of his work, authorized by his estate, will still be under copyright though. This may be a perverse incentive to create adapted texts. Because, when 2033 rolls around, the heirs and assigns of Ian Fleming will own nothing, except these adapted texts. This won't be worth much, since competitors will be free to adapt their own texts, or just use the originals (which most readers would prefer). But owning something is presumably better than owning nohting.

IIRC, there was a case a while back where Joshi & Co. sued a British publisher for using the Joshi texts. They lost the case because a UK judge ruled that there was no copyright protection in corrections. The irony is that Joshi & Co. might have had a case, had they frankly admitted that they were creativelty adapting an corrupting, rather than correcting, the texts.

Dale Nelson Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> It was a no doubt abridged version of Great
> Expectations in a 9th grade reader -- how I wish I
> could get my hands on that book now, over 50 years
> later -- that was perhaps my first experience of
> reading Dickens. I liked it! Even Classics
> Illustrated adaptations of Wells and Verne, I
> suppose, helped to prepare me to enjoy these
> writers and the genre of science fiction.

There surely must be instances where an adapted work is better than an original. But the only thing I can think of at the moment is Galland's MILLE ET UN NUITS, which created a classic of Western Literature, by a free adaptation of certain source texts. Galland's versions focused on the magic and mystery, as opposed to other distractions. But Galland did not so much adapt a classic as save a forgotten text from obscurity.

Works for hire have always been subject to updates. My brother as a child enjoyed the Hardy Boys books, and particularly the original of THE MISSING CHUMS, and was rather shocked to find an altered version in stores which changed the tone and characters. Similar updates were regularly done with Nancy Drew, I heard.

I never got into the Hardy Boys as a child, but I did enjoy the Alfred Hitchcock and the Three Investigators series. These children's novels were works for hire, for Random House, originally penned by Robert Arthur. When Robert Arthur stopped writing, after about 8 or 10 novels, me and my brother stopped reading, because it was obviously not the same. More recently, I have heard that the books have been reissued with edits by Horace Sebastian. One change is the removal of any references to Hitchcock, supposedly because the license to use his name expired, though I suspect other reasons, and other changes. I would bet good money that if I buy the new versions I will find that all non-native English speakers now speak perfect English, because anything else would be "racist". The copyright owners can do what they want, of course. But the blurb "text by Robert Arthur" is no longer entirely true.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 30 Mar 23 | 10:52PM by Platypus.

I don't suppose that version of Great Expectations that I seem to remember was identified, on its first page, as being an edited version -- though I'd be delighted if it were. The title page of the reader might well have given some indication -- I don't know. Again -- how I wish I could get my hands on a copy. But I'm going by an impression that must date to 1970.

Good to see you again, too, Dale!

--Sawfish

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"The food at the new restaurant is awful, but at least the portions are large."
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